OK Boomer.
Do you get the stuff off the shelf for yourself though, or give a list to the stock boy like when you were growing up?
I mean… That is effectively what Instacart and Uber are.
Haven’t really needed to since COVID actually
I just click a few buttons and my groceries appear at my door in a few hours. It’s like magic!
It’s just exploiting different workers, not magic
I see, you’re one of those who prefer to live in a stone age.
I see you’re pro-slavery and pro-genocide.
See look we can all make insane comments that don’t have any backing behind them.
There’s no such thing as “exploiting workers” or “workers” in the first place.
Well this is a take ive never heard before. So when one orders doordash, no workers are involved?
There are no workers. There are providers and consumers.
Are these workers paid?
Look at these plebs pumping their own gas
lol do you see companies passing down the savings to consumers for doing work that was once done by workers.
It has nothing to do with boomer mentality, whatever that means.
Then just wait in line.
I love self checkout. It allows me to scan avocados for my daily avocado toast as russet potatoes. Only 50 more years of that and I’ll be able to afford a house!
I pictured the people overseeing self checkout calling you the potato guy amongst themselves
We 100% know and 95% of us don’t care lol.
Also, if any readers want to try this, the people most likely to care are older workers, but they’re also the least likely to notice.
Going “beep” (optional) and just pocketing every other item does the trick too. At least at Aldi. They skimp on security.
Aldo near me, in Aus, has good security. They do bag checks at the manned checkouts and the self checkouts and watch for mis-identified fruits and veg. I’ve only been caught “forgetting” to scan some items in my trolley twice, both at Aldi.
Your aldi has self checkout? None of the ones around me do.
Not the person you replied to but they recently started adding self-checkout to the ones in Aus. I think the voice sounds like Mr Handy from Fallout.
When talking about Aldi you should know which one you’re talking about. It’s either Aldi Nord or Aldi Süd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi
It’s 2 different stores both using the Aldi name.
In the US, it is Aldi and Trader Joe’s
Neither of the messages in the comment chain implies the US.
But aren’t you terribly glad to be informed of this fact about the US now?
I literally posted the Wikipedia page for it.
If you move to SF you’ll have to learn credit card fraud
(not all SF^, and in SF it’s only certain neighborhoods that do this)
Especially if they play this hand
sidebar
hmm I guess nobody reading here today would ever steal for fun, just out of necessity (b/c otherwise this security escalation is annoying: lots of waiting, maybe fine by me but not overworked/mobility impaired folks etc)
Anyway, learned that liquor stores in India might operate exclusively with this method!
PS: UBI when!!
I live in Germany. No locks here except for expensive stuff like laptops. Everything else is protected solely by the honor system. I’ve even pinched some of their e paper price tags for tech projects. They really can’t be bothered.
I work in a secure area that requires every person entering to have and show id to security, whether you’re recognized or not. They have these scanners that tell them if you’re allowed or not. sometimes the scanner doesn’t work, so they’ll have printed sheets of paper that I’m sure is the equivalent, just takes longer.
One day I came in, gave my ID, heard a “beep”, got it back and continued on. About 10 seconds later my brain caught up to the very obvious vocal “beep” that came from the security guy. I have no idea if they just decided to say fuck it that day and let all the fun people in, or if just the speaker wasn’t working and they were just having some fun.
If I worked for a self-checkout manufacturing company I’d record myself saying “beep” as the beep. And “Ruh-roh” if it didn’t scan.
My local Kroger now will say the name of the item you just keyed in very loudly. “Put your bananas in the bagging area!”
“PUT YOUR HEMORRHOID CREAM IN THE BAGGING AREA!”
I imagine it’s just the items you select from a menu not the scannable ones
That’s not where it goes!
Self checkout (at least in my experience) is now just become “regular checkout” with extra steps.
Each time I scan an item it refuses to scan, so I need to wait for an associate to approach me.
This hasn’t happened to me in years.
Lasers read the most fucked up UPCs now days. I can point my Lowe’s phone at a filthy, half-torn UPS, in sunlight, and it reads. I’m more surprised when it doesn’t work instantly.
This is user error.
Should be MAX like 5% of items give you an issue. That’s mostly just due to age approval for some items.
So if you buy 20 items each visit, you’ll always get one item. 5% is a lot.
The age approval thing you either misunderstood or you just tried to put words into NarrativeBear’s mouth.
I guess you don’t understand the use of the word MAX.
Essentially the only time I need assistance at self checkout is when I need age approval. Not sure how that means I’m putting words in someone’s mouth.
Not sure how that means I’m putting words in someone’s mouth.
Because you claimed it as a fact instead of saying it was your experience.
Ah yes, “Should be” always precedes facts. How could I be so foolish.
I experienced this 15 years ago. I have not experienced this in the last 5.
Except home Depot, fuck home depot
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To me, this has always been more of a boomer complaint.
The things boomers complain about aren’t always wrong. I ain’t their damn employee.
I always wonder if people complained about stores when we started to get the merchandise out of the warehouse ourselves.
Something like, “why isn’t there a clerk getting the groceries on my list for me, I don’t work here, I shouldn’t have to go into the back and get my own shit.”
I prefer bagging my own shit anyways when I go shopping. I don’t break shit and at least in my area it looks like they disabled the weight shit or set the tolerances higher so I’m not constantly told to bag something I already did or getting told I bagged something without scanning .
Now it’s pretty good actually.
I’m also not an employee of the vending machine company. I’m also not an employee of the gas station.
I don’t really see what added value a cashier checking out my items for me has.
That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.
I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.
The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.
scan as you cart and self checkout is like the others.
I don’t think you can in good faith compare…
Ooh, that’s just one of my pet peeves. Such a stupid fucking phrase. The only way to know if you “can’t compare” two things is to do a comparison between them and come to the conclusion that the two things are very different. I can compare self checkout to a kumquat if I want to.
Now for some actually useful conversation, let’s compare number of steps for vending machine vs self checkout (since that’s the closer of my two examples).
Vending machine:
- insert payment
- push button to select items
- pick up item
- repeat all steps until you have the number of items desired
Self checkout:
- scan item or place item on scanner/scale and push buttons for item type. This only counts as one step, because you are never doing both to the same item
- repeat first step until you have all items desired
- insert payment
- pick up items
It’s the same steps in a different order.
is to do a comparison between them and come to the conclusion that the two things are very different.
Mate, they did that. That’s exactly what they did, and they told us how.
repeat all steps until you have the number of items desired
Holllld the fuck. My self checkout has a loose limit of 25 items, who the hell is getting 20 items from a vending machine?
There was also a time when people would get pay to press an elevator button for you. But we don’t do that anymore because those things are super easy and having someone doing it for you won’t make the process faster.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off the most about the self-checkout is that people take forever to scan their stuff. When I was working as a cashier I would have an average of 50 clients/hour. There ain’t no way those self checkout are more efficient considering the time people take.
From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.
The majority of these self checkouts also rate limit you intentionally or otherwise (likely due to weight checking on the bagging area). I know I can scan a lot faster than they let me given a proper setup
And this answers the question.
Someone who isn’t experienced with doing this scanning regularly takes longer. Especially if you have to put in codes for produce or something else with label or scanning problems.
They are quite a bit more efficient when you consider that there’s only 1 staffed register open, but 8 self checkouts open.
And why is that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the business benefits by making the customers the employees, too? Would a business be in any way incentivized to make paying customers also perform labor for them?
So? I get through checkout faster because I don’t have to wait behind old people who take a fucking eternity to find their wallet. For me it’s a win/win. It sucks that some people will lose their job to it, sure. But that’s what happens literally every single time society progresses. I’m also not sad about the manual telephone exchange lady losing her job.
I don’t have to wait behind old people who take a fucking eternity to find their wallet.
She’s still there, she’s just stuck at one of the six kiosks while Americans finally figured out how to queue in one line.
Of course they are. What of it?
Imo, they’re only there for the company to promote ad programs and discourage stealing by being there. Otherwise, they just make the store experience worse? Unless they give me a discount for using a cashier, I ain’t doing in.
Like most things, the answer lies in the middle. You should be able to choose either.
I mean, sure, I’m not there employee either, but I’m also not going to be snarky with a similar response.
I mean we can agree on some things, no? I literally want to stand there while someone checks out my stuff. I have to work to pay for stuff? Oh sweaty.
If I have to self checkout, I should get a discount since an employee was not needed.
That discount is negated by the higher theft rate.
If you are worried about theft, don’t bake in opportunity.
That’s why they removed the self scan stations. It was a short lived experiment.
Where? My region has only gotten more.
Western Europe. Pretty rural place. Self scan seems to work better in cities around here.
Sure, I’m not saying it’s exclusively a boomer complaint, just that boomers tend to complain about it more from my perspective.
I’m all for getting out of there as fast as possible. If I’m in line at self checkout and a cashier says “I can get you here”, I’m over there.
But generally, I prefer self checkout.
Those self checkout lanes are only there so they can cut jobs while charging more for groceries.
I’ll defer to @whotookkarl 's comment as they put it best. No one “wants” those jobs.
I don’t “want” my job either, but I do it to make a living. If local jobs disappear from the community so some rich guy can add another million dollars to his pile, that reduces the number of entry level jobs available locally to people getting into the job market with no safety net in place for them. Just so they can not pass the savings along to us.
The grocery store in which I used to work has been desperate to hire cashiers for years, really since the start of the pandemic. There were some days that we had only two lanes open because that’s all the staff that we had. During busy times, the store manager, the store owners, and sometimes the managers-on-duty would go up to the front to do check-out. The store installed more self-checkout lanes out of necessity.
Nowadays, I go shop there only in the evenings, and there are enough cashiers because they’re all high school students. But the help-wanted sign at the front of the store is still offering open cashier jobs. They’re certainly not eliminating jobs that people desperately need.
I’m asking this sincerely: where are those people working now? They gotta be working something, right?
Sorry, I’m not in a position to know. It would be very interesting if an investigative journalist looked into the state of employment from the perspective of workers these days to put together a bigger picture than one store.
People working those jobs aren’t from a passion for registers or retail commerce. They don’t have many options or can only work part time to accept a low paying job with few responsibilities other than keeping accurate count when making change. I’ll prefer cashiers until we have better social support for people that need those jobs.
I agree 100%.
Self-checkout gang here. I like my groceries bagged a certain way and it’s mildly infuriating to sort stuff on the conveyor belt only for the cashier and/or bagger to mix them randomly in the bags.
You can always bag yourself, they will absolutely let you do it.
Yeah, but then I’m holding up the line as everyone’s watching and waiting for me to finish bagging. I also have to go back to the terminal to pay after the cashier is done ringing up everything, then go back to bagging if I’m not done yet; all the while telling the cashier and/or bagger not to help. At least at the self-checkout, no one is specifically waiting for me to finish.
We are waiting for you at self check out as well Unless there is no line at all.
Eh, you’re technically waiting for a spot to open up, not a specific person at a specific self-checkout counter.
Same problem and I’d prefer we pay a cashier and a bagger. Not a computer and a slow bagger.
Hahaha. Humans are so silly! My preference is the exact opposite of yours, but the reasoning behind my preference is the same. I strongly prefer a cashier over self checkout because I prefer to bag my own stuff, and find it easier to do that while someone else scans.
Very few of the places I shop lately even have a bagger, so I don’t usually have to ask anyone not to help. I find most self checkouts frustrating because there’s no space for scanned items to sit before bagging them.
I also usually plop my card down on the card reader once the cashier starts scanning, so I don’t have to bounce back and forth between bagging & paying.
Cashiers everywhere around here stopped to put things in the bags for at least 10 years now. I still remember the good times when the bags were carefully and properly put by them with all the items magically fitting. Good old times. Nowadays there’s barely a difference between self checkout and using a human operated one. The main difference is that on self checkout I’m not rushed and can take my time to put the items how I want in the bags.
Having somebody bag your items is such a USA thing.
Eh, I come from a 3rd world country and baggers are common. In fact, it makes more sense that jobs like those are more common in places with cheaper labor.
I go at my own pace since I’m doing their job essentially. It’s their fault they didn’t put enough self-checkout lanes. It gives me time to bag and organize everything logically before returning to my vehicle. If they wanted speed they should either hire more cashiers or build more self-checkout.
Fuck that I’m there to get my shit and go, the less interaction the better. For me, personally, it’s ideal.
Sucks about the low paying jobs tho =/
A local grocery store had self check out lanes and removed them and replaced them with 5 express check outs. I feel conflicted about it.
This is such a boomer take.
Nah fuck that, the machines are scabs, I want someone to earn a paycheck for work.
It’s shit work that most people don’t want to do.
Nah fuck that ain’t having time to hang around the whole checkout lane bullshit just to luddite around.
I’d rather they do a more fun and fulfilling job than to do menial tasks just because it has always been like that.
Shit jobs disappearing is a good thing.
It is a mistake to assume that “shit jobs” disappearing will coincide with better jobs becoming available.
All that’s going to do is pull employees from other areas of the store when it gets busy and the rest of the time they will have like 2 cashiers. Even if they did switch back to registers they won’t hire a significant amount of people.
When I worked at Walmart I absolutely hated being sent up to the register. I hated talking to customers and I didn’t like that it took me away from finishing my job and my manager would argue with me about why my area wasn’t done when they sent me up to the register for 6 hours and therefore did not have the time to finish my work.
I have never met a machine that offered to weigh your bags before you start that didn’t immediately fuck everything up if you accepted that offer
Then you will pay higher prices.
I load garden shit at Lowe’s. Sometimes we get blown out and people bitch for faster service. OK. We can always hire more people, any given business’ top expense. Then we charge more. Then the customer bitches about prices and goes to Home Depot. Where they don’t have as much staff. Rinse and repeat.
Banks had no problem slapping a “Teller transaction” fee on withdrawals when ATMs became ubiquitous, to encourage people to use the ATM for free.
That fee is outside my experience. Was that a short-lived thing? Never heard of it, certainly never saw it or heard anyone complain. Weird.
ATMs are not cost free. They’re not merely a kiosk. You have to pay armed men to load/unload them. And not any dude with a pistol will do. I imagine the background check is damned exclusionary.
And then there’s the networking, video and storage, upkeep and updates, all that, it goes on. But of course that still tallies a lower cost than a human, or they wouldn’t do it!
I want
shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work lessto pay more to compensate actual human beings doing actual work and I’m not kidding.
Why? To maintain capitalism as something we can pretend is viable for one more generation, just long enough for you to die before you might have to change?
To maintain capitalism
…Seriously? This is your defense? Do you for some reason think that if we all used the self-checkout system that capitalism would vanish? Is OP the one at the helm of whether or not capitalism lives or dies? It all rests on his shoulders, not the status quo or the endless pursuit of profit by billionaires and politicians?
If supermarkets were autonomous, you’d be homeless living in the ally next to them, capitalism alive and well.
Do I think self checkouts are the one thing stopping capitalism? No. But I do think it’s going to have to get a whole lot worse before things change. We need all fast food workers, all wait staff, all grocery workers, all packaging workers to lose jobs. Needs to be impossible to ignore.
Alley*
Cashier line: Empty
Me: “I don’t come here to talk to people”
It really depends. I do it in one shop because its more convinient. I have to put the stuff only one time in my hands.
- get the scanner on entry of the shop.
- scan item at shelf and put it in your bags
- repeat 2
- scan exit
- pay
- put bags from shopping cart into car.
That sounds like a dream self-service option.
in my experience it is:
- Go put it all the things in the cart
- Unpack each thing from the cart.
- For each thing: scan it, weigh it, maybe you pack it in a bag. You get three bags, so no real option to organize, and hope you like plastic bags. Also zero table space to work with.
- As you go, put the things you scanned on the cart with the stuff you have yet to scan, don’t mix anything up though!
- if you scan too fast or encounter an item that is wrong in the system: get fucked wait a few min for an attendant to punch in their PIN so you can try again. If that doesn’t work, get fucked wait for a supervisor to come around and override whatever shit their system is doing wrong.
- If you scan too slow or look at a prompt too long get fucked an attendant will be on your ass instantly to demand to know what you’re doing wrong. Yes this is contrary to the above wait time, and I don’t know why both of those things are true.
So yeah you can probably see why I hate self checkout.
I would hate that too.
There are two stores at the end of the road into my neighborhood. The one on the other side has several self checkout stations so I exclusively go there now. I haven’t had to speak to anyone in months. It’s awesome
Not only do I not work here, I wish to spend as little time here as possible.
So I’ll hand the scanning and bagging task to someone who has been doing it every day for years and can get that done quickly, in the lane where they provide enough table space to actually work, two people to do the two jobs of scanning and bagging… and all that without the extra steps of weighing every individual item, stopping for assistance if you look at it funny, and stopping to upsell you on the fucking loyalty program.
Grocery pickup > normal checkout > self checkout.
They aren’t nearly as motivated to go as fast as I am, and they can only bag one person at a time and have lines, while usually there are 4-6 machines wide open for me to jump onto immediately.
I fucking hate going to the grocery store though.
EDIT: also lonely old people will stop and chit chat sometimes slowing shit even more.
I didn’t realize this was such a contentious subject.
When this first became a big thing like 15 years ago, I feel like most people hated them. Then it becomes normalized, society shifts.
My experience has been the opposite, I feel like they were treated as marvelous futuristic wonders at first, and now the more time passes the more I see people opposed to them. I suppose it just depends who you spend your time with.
I’m introverted, I liked them immediately.
Ugh, yeah, i hate customers that take their damn time. if there’s no line, i may go to a traditional register, but i highly prefer waitig for self check out rather than waiting for a cashier
Probably just different grocery stores with different patterns and workflows.
My experience is a normal checkout line is usually a reasonable wait so unless someone bought three carts of groceries they’ll get through before too long.
In contrast the self checkout is a clusterfuck of idiots who don’t know how to use it, people not sure where to stand while they wait because there aren’t really lines, and 1 frazzled attendant trying to cover 6-8 people simultaneously screwing up their self-checkout.
I fucking hate going to the grocery store though.
On this we agree!
Well wait in line then…
But there’s also a line for self checkout.
